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education

July 31, 2012

"Who's Got Class?" is a social game that exposes players to the many facets and programs of WCET (the host for the game), and rewards them for their engagement and contributions. The light-hearted program is designed to provide a first-hand experience of social games and badges for learning. While geared toward representatives of WCET's member institutions, "Who's Got Class?" is open to all interested parties until October 31, 2012. Email gamemaster@imserious.net (include name, institution/employer, work email) to receive your invitation to play "Who's Got Class?".

As of this writing, there are 23 active discussion threads within the Forum area of "Who's Got Class?". They cover everything from resource lists to diversity to quality assurance to suggestions for uses of game+badge programs.

I think my favorite thread (at least right now) is in response to a technical hiccup we had with our badge platform. The other day, suddenly and mysteriously, several players experienced a massive score increase. The result was that players and teams that had been highly ranked were no longer on the leaderboards.

One player was peeved enough to start a new discussion which she titled, "Cheating?" Many others chimed in. The comments were considered, even high brow. Questions were raised about authentication of badge awards, whether it's possible to game the game system, (de)motivation, the value of peer moderation (shunning?), whether scores should be displayed on leaderboards or kept private - pretty lofty and important stuff, really.

But it's the subtext of the entire discussion that is most instructive because truly, what everybody was worked up about was the possibility that they had gotten screwed. That some other player(s) had cheated, had gained an unfair advantage, and now the creeps were winning and the righteous and rightful leaders had been trounced.

Nobody likes cheaters, especially when you're the one getting cheated. When somebody beats you "fair and square," you may feel dismayed and disappointed. But if the game is fair and the win is legitimate, well that's the way it goes.

So how do we deal with cheating in a game-based social learning environment?

For games that are closed systems, designers are able to ensure that cheating isn't possible by eliminating (i.e., not recognizing) player actions that would result in cheating. (NOTE: this isn't 100% true - we can all think of examples of websites that give "cheat codes" to players who know how to find them.)

But in a social learning environment that intentionally sends players out of that environment to accomplish various missions and quests in order to earn badges and points, how do we prevent cheating? Should we even attempt to? When cheating occurs, how do we deal with it? Is it the instructors' responsibility to call it out? To render punishment, and how severely? What is the responsibility of other members of the learning community? And, no matter how you answer these questions, what are the ramifications of taking those positions?

As I've previously written, badges for learning are gaining attention on many fronts. In higher education, interest is growing particularly around benefits that badge systems might provide for student engagement and student retention. Additionally, education innovators are exploring the use of badges as drivers for certification programs and other competency-based learning settings. (For a primer on badges for learning, you might be interested in this webcast I co-presented in March with John Bower of uBoost.)

With all these questions whirling around, WCET leadership felt a calling to explore the world of badges and games for learning by hosting this "sandbox" project. The purpose of Who's Got Class is to give participants a light-hearted personal experience of these emerging learning technologies, and to provide participants with a platform for collaborative evaluation of possible applications within higher education.

I am so pleased that WCET asked me to design this program, and to partner with the BadgeStack team at Learning Times to do the implementation. Now that Who's Got Class is going live, my role is shifting to gamemaster, which enables me both to participate in and to monitor the evolution of the experience. I will be blogging here frequently about Who's Got Class, looking at design and implementation considerations and a host of other things that contribute - or don't - to a successful game+badges for learning experience.

Participation in Who's Got Class is by invitation only. If you'd like to play with us, send an invitation request to gamemaster@imserious.net. We'd love to have you. Invitations will be sent when Who's Got Class goes public next week.

October 12, 2011

If not, you may be feeling the need to “refresh” users’ experience of your content by introducing a badge system. In all likelihood, one or more of your competitors has either introduced badges or is putting together a plan to do so. Just as with games, the conversation about badges is quickly shifting from “Should we…?” to “How do we…?” and “How soon can we…?”

Services like Foursquare and Facebook have reminded us that collecting and displaying badges for others to admire can be satisfying and fun, even as adults. By combining contests and challenges with geo-location data and social networking, these services enable us to receive points and gain status for checking in at various places. Not only are our network connections notified of our peregrinations, participating merchants can publically reward loyal customers and thereby encourage repeat visits from other patrons.

Badges are more than coupons, though. In the aggregate, they tell stories about us, about how we spend time, possibly where and with whom. More importantly, they indicate achievement, skills, affiliations, expertise, and participation. As artifacts of our activities, they also imply something about our determination, curiosity, perseverance and commitment (or, depending on what the badge commemorates, sloth and an ability to waste time).

A well-designed badge system (i.e., a series of inter-related badges) does several things at once:

It articulates the path(s) to success

It provides incentives that are meaningful to the target audience

It rewards desired behaviors and achievements

It represents the badgeholder’s status, competencies and attainments to the rest of the world

It facilitates community attachment and reputation-building

It encourages collaboration and teamwork

It promotes mentorship and leadership

It opens doors to new avenues of exploration and accomplishment

It’s no wonder, then, that organizations whose purpose is to educate and inform see badge systems as an important addition to traditional approaches to credentialing and certification. Through badge awards, issuers can reward and communicate much more about a recipient’s performance than a single grade or score could ever hope to convey.

Perhaps the most promising aspect of badge systems is the opportunities they provide for stimulating attainment of higher order thinking (analyzing, evaluating and creating). By building challenges into badge systems that require active application of skills and information in “higher order” activities, badges become reliable indicators of a badgeholder’s abilities to incorporate new knowledge in effective, even sophisticated, ways.

Over the next year or so, we can expect to see badges appear in some interesting venues, from community colleges, training providers, and membership organizations to news websites, social networks and political campaigns. Some of these initiatives will roll out in conjunction with a larger “gamification” strategy. Many will use badges as the on-ramp to the road to game-based communication.

The Mozilla Foundation is giving the badge movement additional gravitas. With support from the MacArthur Foundation, they are building an “Open Badge Infrastructure” (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges) so that badgeholders can display the badges they’ve earned across websites, regardless of when or from whom the badges were received.